The menu of my faith

BY BARBARA HOFFMAN

After a hard day’s work, either at the office or at school, there is nothing better than a warm plate of food to still those nagging hunger pangs that have built up throughout the day.

Snacks and nibbles just don’t seem to be satisfy me anymore; my body now needs a home-cooked, well-balanced meal, prepared at home and shared around a table.

This meal I would compare to my Christian faith. It is nutritious and filling, balanced and essential. The meal is necessary for my body’s growth and its sustenance, giving me the correct nutrients required to continue with energy and enthusiasm.

Sometimes it’s hard work to prepare a decent plate of food (or maybe a recipe book was consulted to confirm forgotten steps), but in the end I know that the unseen task of this balanced meal will immune me against stray germs and bacteria while strengthening and nurturing me at the same time.

Ah, so my hunger has been satisfied. But there’s more: the dessert.

It is an entirely optional ending (I’ve never heard of a dessert being forced down!). My all-time favourite is full-cream vanilla ice-cream, topped with melted Bar-One chocolate sauce and sprinkled with chocolate vermicelli.

This decadent dessert I see as the practices of my Catholic faith. The added treat of the vermicelli sprinkles is the added joy of Our Lady, the many saints and my guardian angels.

They are there to turn to when I am in need of sweet solutions. Their exemplary lives, uplifting words or their silent presence, knowing they are all around me with an ever-listening ear, is a comfort I seek often.

The chocolate sprinkles are generously scattered on top of warm, melted chocolate sauce which slowly slides down balls of ice-cream. The rich, flowing sauce represents the many prayers that cover me throughout the day.

From the quiet of my morning offering to the sanctus at sunset, for every feeling and for every emotion, a prayer awaits to be said to and guard me through the day.

It is this optional meal of sweetness that gives me that extra joy and enrichment to my already balanced meal of knowing that Christ has already fed my hunger.

After enjoying this complete meal, I look hard at those around me. For those of us not afflicted with the heart-wrenching poverty that plagues our country and our continent, it has become the spiritual meal—one that is so often ignored—that aches deeper than the physical.

Everyone needs to eat. Everyone deserves to be nourished. Take-outs just don’t do it for me anymore.